The El Minzah Wine Bar, Tangier, early hours of Sunday February 4th 2007.
The bar is meant to close at midnight. However, Mr MacGowan’s status as an international musician of repute ensures we’re allowed a generous extra three hours. The wall is akin to some of those theatre bars around Covent Garden; full of framed signed photos of vaguely known persons who’ve visited the place. But the El Minzah’s diet is far more varied. Paul Bowles, several times. Jean Genet. Richard Harris. Steven Berkoff. Winston Churchill. The actress Julia Stiles. John Malkovich. So we agree to send the staff a signed photo of Mr MacG for their collection. It’s the least you can do for a Tangier lock-in. And to be fair, he is a good name for the wall of a foreign bar. The Richard Harris photo really swung this thought: Opulence and Decadence.
Having trouble getting my iBook online in the hotel. The El Minzah’s wifi is erratic: it gives perfect internet when I log on, but then after few minutes the Net is gone, even though the Airport connection itself is intact. The staff aren’t sure why, and I can’t explain myself too well in what can only be described as Pigeon Whatever. On top of which, I don’t speak Computer very fluently either. So nothing progresses there.
I resort to plugging in the laptop to my room’s phone socket, and search for a free local dial-up ISP. No joy, so I have to resort to a pricy call to some European dial-up service. The Moroccan ISPs I find either have changed their numbers, or don’t accept Macs. Or something. The sad thing is, I’m really not sure. Unlike what my neighbour said the day after I appeared on a TV programme about the Internet, I’m not really into computers. I’m like one of those car drivers who need to call the AA for the slightest malfunction. The computer is a tool: I don’t need to know how it works any more than a TV addict needs to know the history of the cathode ray.
I have heard that more modern travellers have no problem with this sort of thing. Rhodri Marsden kindly talked me through how to get online in some foreign desert via Bluetooth and my mobile. The only problem is, my mobile isn’t Bluetooth. In fact, I’m still not sure what a Bluetooth actually is. A slightly downsized pirate? Bluebeard’s stunt double? And this is where the more gadget-heavy, youth-clinging readers sit back and laugh a superior laugh.
Well, so be it. I provide a public service. Always good to be a writer who knows less than the reader. I do hate the omniscient God-like image of the narrator. Who the hell does a third party storyteller think he is? All narrators are at best, control freaks. At worse, blasphemers. Or do I mean that the other way round?
Unreliable narrators are the only ones you can really trust.
